UK'S ONLINE SAFETY ACT

The near-decade of review is over, and the Act is in full force - but the controversy carries on

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In the nine years since the UK government first proposed the Online Safety Act (The Act) in a working paper, debates have raged on about how to best protect the public from the pitfalls of our super-connected world.

Finally put in force on July 25, after extensive reviews, the legislation hasn't eased the tug o' war between online safety advocates and online privacy groups that have some very legitimate shared concerns despite being at odds.

Passed by parliament in October 2023, the Act puts heavy-duty pressure on social media companies and search services to take responsibility for their users' safety on their platforms. Platforms are required to be more transparent than ever about the content they allow, ostensibly giving users better control over the kinds of content they want to access.

The strongest protections in the Act have been designed for children under the age of 18, preventing them from seeing harmful or age-inappropriate content. It gives parents and children clear and accessible ways to report these potential problems.

At this point in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the uncertainty and excitement is cranked up to 11. Because people will be people, the lightspeed progress in technology colliding with human behavior has made online environments rife with emotional, physical, intellectual, and financial dangers.

Ofcom, the independent media regulator for all methods of communication in the UK, oversees the initiative. In their guide to the Act, they stated, “As well as pornography, we expect the riskiest services to use strong age checks to protect children from suicide, self-harm and eating disorder content and other types of harmful content, while preserving adults' rights to access legal content.”

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